The world today is becoming increasingly digital and this is even more true in business. Invoices from your vendors increasingly arrive via email, and are a click away in the cloud or in your servers. With all this automation you would think it would be easy to analyze invoices with software, right? Well not exactly….
Let’s first look at the flip side of receiving invoices, and that’s paying them. According to the Wall Street Journal about half of large US corporations still pay bills by paper check and send them through the mail. The larger the company the more this is true. The system works, it’s safe and a check provides more information than a digital payment so it’s easier to reconcile. When it comes to digital or E-invoicing the US lags our European and Latin American counterparts big time. Many countries have legislation mandating E-invoicing but the US does not, and since it involves capital investment to change-mostly on the part of the vendor, many companies don’t do it. So, paper invoicing and payments are still around.
KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Most invoice analyzing software uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This enables you to convert different types of documents such as scanned paper documents and PDFs into editable and searchable data. With paper invoices you would still have to scan them into the software, and this adds extra time. Once scanned maintaining accuracy in the search can be difficult across the board with the many different invoice formats you receive. And, like most technology products, you must tell it what to do, and unless you know what to look for on vendor invoices you may not find errors, omissions, or new promotions that could save you the most money.
INDUSTRY SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Whether its wireless / cellular billing, waste, shipping, or other business categories its important to have an experienced professional from that industry reviewing your invoices. That in depth and analytical knowledge can yield dramatically better results than a software that simply scans a set of “rules” that have been input. The downside is of course the manual process takes longer, but the increased savings can far outweigh the extra time. How much can be save using a third party? Click here to find out.
HOW TO BUDGET
The cost of any software can run into the six figures depending on the size of your organization, and you would have to budget for the expense. You can solve this issue by engaging an outside firm that does this work on a contingency basis. So if they don’t find any savings, correct errors, or uncover promotions that drive down your cost there are no fees.
Mobilia Consulting LLC is a Cost Reduction Company, founded in 2013. They serve mid to large size business all over the U.S, and offer a no cost no obligation review of your corporate spend in a variety of business categories. Click here to see how much you can save.